The mystery of decoding discontinued and lost perfumes

The mystery of decoding discontinued and lost perfumes

Sometimes they are still being made, but perhaps the original company sold the rights to the formula, which was then cheapened and virtually destroyed. (White Shoulders, anyone?) Others were produced in large quantities and hang on for years before finally going away for good. Twenty or even ten years ago the growth of the online perfume universe could hardly have been imagined.

I became intrigued with this subject several years ago during my quest for the fragrance called Ines de la Fressange, who was my all time favorite model and onetime Karl Lagerfeld/Chanel muse whose exquisite good taste I admired; she was the face for their Coco fragrance back in the day and I thought that any perfume with her name on it stood an excellent chance of being good. I discovered that there were two of them, and both were already discontinued by the time my search commenced. The first was released in 1999 and the second in 2004. I had never seen either of them in a store. Most of the photos on the discounter sites were of a really pretty bottle with a floral motif half encased in metal and half in frosted glass. As it turned out, that was the bottle for the 2004 release. The 1999 fragrance comes in a simple, unadorned heavy glass bottle that reminds me a little of L signature bottles. The one I ended up ordering was that one, and I really loved it, and I have since repurchased it. It is a perfect summer scent composed of fresh florals including whit rose and a zesty touch of spicy carnation. I kept looking for the other one, but all the descriptions were for the 1999 scent even though the photo was often of the 2004 bottle! Finally a fellow perfume lover sent me a small decant of the later scent, which was very nice and most definitely different, a sweet and feminine rose. However, as it ended up I liked the first one much better anyway, despite the lure of the other pretty bottle. You can judge a book, or a perfume, by its cover.

My other quest, recently successful, was to find the elusive Pan Ame by Jean Patou. My mission was (and still is) to try every perfume the house of Patou had ever done, but I had never seen it even in my local perfume boutique that carries everything by Patou, and it must have come and gone so quickly that I wondered if it even made it to our shores. Whenever I located a site that had it they were always out of stock. Searches for a list of notes were in vain; not even one description seemed to exist online. Its bottle is nearly identical to that of 1992 Sublime, so I figured it had come out sometime after that one, which is a great favorite of mine. As it turned out, it was an early creation of Patou house perfumer Jean Michel Duriez, who succeeded Jean Kerl the nose behind Sublime, in 1997, and Pan Ame was released in 2001.

I finally located a miniature collectible of Pan Ame at Beauty Encounter, and in a few days it was mine. It was the Eau de Toilette, and very light and soft. It is summery and fresh, though I was hoping it would last longer on my skin. I detected a subtle fruity note of pear, and possibly linden flower. Once more I hit the Internet and this time I found an article from the September 2001 issue of Cosmetics International Products Report announcing its arrival on the market. Pan Ame is a nickname that Parisians call their city, and the elements in it are meant to evoke the spirit of the Parisian way of life. I was right about some of the notes anyway; according to the article the scent has head notes of lilac, violet and linden blossoms, heart notes of pear and peach and base notes of sandalwood, oak moss and musk. The full article was blocked by a firewall so I got no further, but the mystery was solved. I wish I could find this in a stronger concentration, because I really like it. The EDT will do for summer, but it would be nice to have it in Parfum; I wonder if it ever came in that strength? I may never know. I found another company that carries the full size bottles (Perfume Outlet) for a very low price, so it may be a future purchase.

It is possible to spend hours on perfume sites wondering if you should buy something without ever having tried it. At times it works, but it a shot in the dark for these orphaned perfumes. With luck you might find one or more reliable descriptions of something that captures your interest. If you ever wonder what happened to a favorite scent from the past, hit the discounter sites and have at it. You may find your long lost treasure, or something new and different. The chase is half the fun!